


This Awful Energy

by versacefrolic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Coming of Age, Conduct Disorder, Origin Story, Other, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 10:23:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7711363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versacefrolic/pseuds/versacefrolic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No child is born evil. Evil is made, not unlike a diamond, under thousands of pounds of pressure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i'm bigger than my body

**Author's Note:**

> After reading Cursed Child, I couldn't leave this treasure chest of angst and misfortune unopened. In the script we only get to see Delphi fully-formed, springing from the head of Voldemort as a twenty-something with little fanfare. I think she deserves an entire parade. How'd you get so fucked up, pretty little bird? Come, readers--let's find out together.
> 
> If it's not already evident: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD. SUPER HUGE AS FUCK MAJOR SPOILERS.

_and all the kids cried out,_

_"please stop, you're scaring me."_

_i can't help this awful energy_

_goddamn right, you should be scared of me_

_who is in control?_

\- halsey, control

* * *

 

There is a clean, clinical smell clinging to the walls of a dimly lit corridor, the antiseptic silence broken only by strings of outrageously vile curses. Opulent, but cold, the portraits in this particular wing of the manor house have been enshrouded at the behest of the witch currently screaming behind a locked door. Something about their eyes passing judgement on a birth out of wedlock.

“Get it out of me! Get the damned thing out! Out!” she shrieks, blood soaking the birthing table, the floor, the hands of the mediwitch. The Terror of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black lies upon the table, her pale, spread thighs streaked with red and afterbirth.

“A girl, lady,” the mediwitch breathes, muttering spells to quiet the screaming child. The mediwitch swaddles the newborn lovingly, extends the child forward to rest upon the heaving chest of its mother... and recoils sharply as Bellatrix blasts off a spell. The child screeches, knowing nothing of hexes and jinxes, only the sudden sharpness of pain. To have left such warmth and security for this?

“Get it away from me. My duty is done,” Bellatrix spits. The child's screeching quiets as the mediwitch silences the cries with spellwork.

“Very well, my lady.”

The mediwitch exits the cold, dimly lit room and enters the gloomy corridor. When she arrives at the richly stained double oak doors, she knocks three times as instructed, setting the child at the foot of the door before hurrying away through the labyrinthine and seemingly endless hallways of Malfoy Manor, back to the entrance, the sunlight. She'd Apparate on the spot if the wards allowed it, but with times being what they are... _It can't be helped_ , she thinks, regretting ever accepting this strange, disturbing assignment. _But the money..._

She shakes her head and follows her memory in the direction of the front gates. She never makes it past the foyer.

 

* * *

 

The dark room in which the child is placed is ornate, dark wood panelling interspersed with intricate brocade, crenellated ceilings offset by paintings depicting a glorious battle. The drawn curtains are curiously heavy and free of dust, quite efficient at blocking out all but the merest traces of light. It's not a child's room, not by any means, with its rigid furniture better meant for staring at than sitting on, but the crib the child screams in, diaper soiled, is a lovely deep cherry, expertly made. It screams for no less than two hours without ceasing, no mother to soothe its cries, no father to change its cloth diaper. It is hungry. It is cold. It reaches out to the beautiful, terrible ceiling and feels nothing reaching back in return.

Later, much later, after it has screamed itself silent, tiny throat raw with effort, a small house elf appears with a bottle the baby struggles to use. The house elf is kind, but has been instructed to feed the child, change its diaper, and leave. The kindly elf longs to pick the baby up, to sing it a cheerful song, to let the light in... but it must not displease the master of the house. With a last glance at the baby struggling with the bottle in the crib, the tearful house elf exits.

 

***

 

Days later the door to the room opens and the child meets its mother for the first time. It won't remember Bellatrix's wild hair or dark eyes, won't remember the casual remark that it was a “quiet little beast.” Babies cry when they want, when they need. When that need is not met, the primal, instinctual part in all of us admits defeat. Not immediately, no, but with time. Unrequited love, unanswered prayers, unheeded calls. A study of hope's negation: in the end, they all go silent.

Bellatrix unceremoniously lifts her child from the crib, stares it straight in the face. The Black genes have persisted, yes, with the hooded eyes and long, full eyelashes. But there is much of the child's father there: pale, snow white skin, dark, depthless eyes, and a disarming, well-crafted face. Bellatrix bares her teeth at the child, shakes it lightly. She notices the back of the baby's head has gone flat from lying in the crib and makes a note to tell Lucius to include lifting the child up among the daily house elf duties. No daughter of the House of Black would be misshapen.

Struck by an errant maternal impulse, she cradles the child close, pushing its head against her boldly beating heart, and whispers, “ _Toujours pur_.” The child struggles against her, almost pushing her away. It doesn't speak French. It doesn't speak any language at all. It doesn't understand this new figure touching its face and its body. It is not being cleaned, it is not being fed. So what, then? What is this new attention?

Disappointed with the boredom displayed by the child of necessity and one-sided passion, Bellatrix all but tosses the baby back into the crib where it at long last begins to wail. “Now you want to play?” Bellatrix huffs, rolling her eyes. She exits. She never returns.

 

***

 

Six months later—the house elf coming day in and day out to do its quiet duty—the silent, malnourished, still slightly misshapen child is spirited away under cover of night to the door of Euphemia Rowle.

 


	2. i'm colder than this home

“No.” The witch's arms are crossed against her under-endowed breasts, blonde hair pinned back tight and immovable even as she shakes her head fiercely. She refuses to open the door farther and allow entrance into her home.

“This is not up for debate, Euphemia,” Narcissa Black says, a large wicker basket with a child glamored to look like a bundle of fruit sitting at her feet. “We are not in an age of democracy just yet.”

“You'd have me believe that The Dark Lord himself requests this injustice?” Euphemia Rowle laughs, shooing away the house elves waiting to accept the large basket. “Narcissa, if you think for a second that I don't know this is some insipid scheme to shelter the Squib Lestrange offspring, then you have me confused with another weak-willed ninny. He already has my Thorfinn; he shall not have my home as well.”

“You dare defy Him?” Narcissa hisses, reaching for her wand.

Euphemia has already drawn her wand, watchful eyes on the high-hedged topiary surrounding her meager estate. “You deign to draw on me? You may have tethered yourself to the rising star of the Malfoys, but a proper match does not a better witch make. I bested you at Hogwarts and I can do it again, _Cissy_ ,” Euphemia snarls, evoking the school-aged name she'd once called her friend.

Narcissa's eyes harden and she slides her wand back into her robes. “I'm not here to fight, Euphie. Does He not also command Lucius? Does He not also have my home? It is different for us. It always has been. We are not made from such hard substance as Bellatrix is. We are mothers.”

Euphemia scoffs. “ _You_ are the mother, Narcissa.”

“And what a saving grace it has been!” Narcissa says sharply. “My son is my purpose! No husband to console me, to sit worshipfully at my feet. No, there is only Draco who still comes when I call, who values me above all others. This child would be a blessing to you, Euphie.”

“A burden, more like,” Euphemia says, clearly crumbling. “And what do Rodolphus and Bellatrix say to all this, then? Champions for the cause of fostering their pup with the last childless pure-blood family?”

“No one blames you for being barren,” Narcissa says, looking away. “Bella and Rod are on the front lines every day. That's no place for a child. And Draco... he does what he must, but he wasn't raised a Death Eater. This child will be.”

“Aye, what a brain-washed little warrior it will become,” Euphemia sighs. “Well, let's have it, then.” She instructs a house elf to take the basket inside, directing the elf to the smallest, coldest room in the house, one typically reserved for unused, cursed objects.

“Splendid,” Narcissa smiles, though she knew there was never any other outcome upon arrival. “I must swear you to secrecy of course,”

“Of course, of course,” Euphemia shakes her head. “You and your Unbreakable Vows. Half the country's pure-blooded, able-bodied wizard population should be dead by now."

“And the child's weight in galleons for every year you harbor her.”

“The child's weight?” Euphemia says, outrage and humor mingling dangerously in her voice. “At present it weighs not but a bird!”

“Your weight then!” Narcissa says. “It matters not the price, Euphie.” Narcissa bites back the desire to say that the Rowles need every knut they can lay their hands on. The expectation of the family line dying out with Thorfinn and Euphemia led them to an extravagant way of life, indeed, burning through the family fortune like wildfire. They'd already moved house from the esteemed Rowle Manor and into this pittance of an estate, selling heirlooms and artifacts alike to continue throwing elaborate parties in hopes of winning back their reputation as a Sacred Twenty-Eight family in good standing, but the whispers and sidelong glances... 

“Done,” Euphemia agrees, holding out a hand.

Narcissa beckons Severus forth to begin the Unbreakable Vow while a house elf magics its way around the storage room, moving aside this cursed relic and that charmed necklace to make way for the silent, staring little child.

 

***

 

As Narcissa hadn't passed along a name for the child, Euphemia addresses the baby only as “it,” never bothering to consult star charts as the Blacks were so often inclined to do. It was an odd child as far as her knowledge extended to infants, never crying or reaching up out of its crib as Euphemia looked in on its waken, watchful form. It would only accept milk from house elves, and then only from a bottle, though she daresay the Malfoys couldn't have been doing a good enough job what with its scrawny appearance and sunken, lifeless eyes. She consults books on the matter and begins mixing in tonics with its food, knowing that the Lestrange family would raise hell should they discover a weak, sickly child when they came to claim it.

It is when Euphemia discovers the baby wailing in the storage room one afternoon, a statue having toppled over and knocked down its crib, that she decides the scratching, quavering cry sounds like that of a dolphin's screech. The child is henceforth called “Delphini.”

“Come now, Delphini,” Euphemia laughs as the child thrashes about on the floor. “Is that any way a daughter of the Houses of Black and Lestrange conducts itself?” The baby thrashes its legs against the floor, staccato cries ringing throughout the entire estate. Euphemia levitates the statue to its rightful place, sends the child swinging and spinning through the air in a staggering, frightful dance. “Hush,” she finishes, setting Delphini back in her crib, shooting off a silencing spell. “There. That's better.”

She never holds the child.

 

***

 

Society witches, especially those of pure-blood status, spend hours entertaining company and participating in the latest gossip, and Euphemia Rowle is no different, playing charming hostess to an endless procession of fashionably dressed, snobby witches tittering about the movements of The Dark Lord. Delphini, accustomed to silence, listens to snippets of conversation as they drift her way across the house. It is in this muted, half-heard manner that she learns to speak.

Alone in a house full of witches, Delphini looks at the ceiling and says to herself. “Ba. Ba ba ma.” House elves peer at her across cherry bars and whisper encouragement.

“That's a good girl,” one whispers, nodding.

Delphini struggles from her reclined position, tiny fists balling. “Ba da da da. Ba da. Ba da.”

Euphemia summons the elves to begin tea preparation and the courageous house elf can't help but think the child's first words sound like the beginnings of the word “bad.”

And it is bad, indeed, when the end comes. Swift, as it seems overnight Thorfinn Rowle is poised to achieve great heights in The Dark Lord's army, then the next morning he is locked up in Azkaban with a life sentence. Bellatrix Lestrange murdered by the blood-traitor Weasley whore. Rodolphus Lestrange and a slew of other heads of pure-blood families locked away in Azkaban to rot for their “crimes.” Euphemia, distraught, screams into her fireplace.

“What crimes?!” she shouts to the billowing face of Narcissa Malfoy. “Cleansing the world of such filth is no crime!”

Narcissa is solemn but otherwise unmoved. “We were never going to win, Euphie.”

“Not with bumbling twats like Bellatrix at the helm! Taken out by Weasley scum? That over-fed bimbo couldn't hex her own toes!” Euphemia angrily swipes away her tears, cursing her idiot husband and the day he ever joined up with these death eating imbeciles. “And now I have her demon spawn sitting in my storage room! I have half a mind to throw it into this damned fire!”

Narcissa's eyes harden in the haze of the fireplace. “You will do no such thing. You have made the Vow. You know the consequences. I will not have my new found freedom imposed upon by the ravaging of a madwoman.”

“How lucky for you,” Euphemia spits. “Your husband and your precious Draco. What a happy family. Do you even mourn His passing, Cissy?”

The fiercely triumphant look in Narcissa's eyes is the last thing Euphemia sees before the fire is once again a fire.

 

***

 

After her husband's trial, Euphemia imports a large, mournful bird from Ireland and places its enormous cage in the center of her sitting room. The augurey caws ominously as Euphemia levitates Delphini's crib into the room and selects the first of many books she intends to read to the baleful little beast. Bellatrix's fortune was quite large, after all, and if Rodolphus was never leaving Azkaban... 

“Listen well, Delphini. You are the last pure-blooded descendant of two great lines. You _will_ become a witch of esteem befitting your title.” Delphini merely stares on, babbling lightly as the augurey croons.

 

 


	3. i'm meaner than my demons

It is four in the morning and Delphini is screaming at the top of her lungs, thrashing bodily on the floor outside the door of Euphemia's bedroom. Massaging her temples, the long-suffering witch reaches for a dressing robe and steels her features into wakefulness. The tantrum was the third this week after Euphemia began sequestering Delphini in her room—now free of cursed objects, outfitted with a rigid bed and a wardrobe with a handful of girl's dresses—after she was caught plucking feathers from the augurey. It was a cruel, meaningless behavior on the child's part, plucking the feathers simply because she could. At first Euphemia went into a rage, calling her all manner of vile names. This seemed to spur the attacks on with renewed vengeance, the poor bird nearly naked of tail feathers. Deciding the outraged response is what the beast craved, Euphemia instead charmed the door of Delphini's simple room locked.

That she had somehow unlocked it was both unnerving and pleasing. So the child was no Squib after all.

“Did you do this?” Euphemia asks, pointing to the door no longer spelled shut. Delphini looks up at the witch with large, fathomless eyes and babbles incoherently like the twelve month old she is. “You were put here as punishment. Do you dare defy my rules in my home?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Euphemia spies smooth movement around the posters of the child's bed. Flicking her wand deftly, a spark flies out and elicits an audible hiss from the slithering form. A snake. “How in the—” Euphemia begins, calling upon all manner of spells to rid the house of the serpent when the snake slides into a perfect circle around Delphini. Almost like... “Protection from a snake? How like Bellatrix.” _Or not so much Bellatrix as..._ “Very well, Delphini Black Lestrange. You may have your pet creature as well as I am entitled to mine.” She leans down in the child's face, leveling her wand at the snake's head. “Touch one more feather on my bird and we will be having snake for dinner.”

She turns with a flourish, dressing robe swishing around her ankles, and charms the door locked once again. For good measure, she charms her own door locked as well, throwing up a defensive ward over her bed. It is daylight before she finally finds sleep.

 

***

 

Cursed as she is by the Unbreakable Vow, Eupehmia nevertheless finds loopholes subverting some of the finer nuances of the spell. She'd sworn to protect the child from death, but not harm. She'd sworn to never reveal the child, but only insofar as revealing the child's true parentage. It was easy enough to pass the girl off as a niece of distant international relations. As the weeks turned to months turned to years, the question of appropriate schooling became an issue. Having read through the majority of the Rowle's library—from Dark Arts to wizarding history to ancient bestiaries—Euphemia has to admit that she is no professor, skilled though she is. Hogwarts, then? What with Delphini's eyes and curious proclivity for snakes, it is too risky a prospect. Durmstrang, then, and the kingly tuition it calls for.

Troubled by her thoughts, Euphemia watches Delphini toddle about the garden, chasing rabbits and butterflies. It appears the Black's genetic disposition for fair hair that skipped Bellatrix and expressed in Narcissa also found its way to Delphini, her fair hair glinting in the sunlight. A fair, beautiful child. But such cold eyes, ones with no laughter in them.

“Delphi,” she calls through the open window. “Come. It's time for tea.” As Delphini turns to come inside, Euphemia notices three pale garden snakes following in her wake.

Delphini grabs tiny triangles of cucumber sandwiches and pushes them into her mouth, kicking her feet around as she eats. “Auntie,” she says, all phonetics.

“Mmm?” The snakes sit outside the front door and Euphemia has lost her appetite. In the sitting room the augurey caws.

“Are you my mummy?” Delphini's voice holds no inflection; the question is hardly a question at all.

“Don't be silly, child. One cannot be one's aunt and mother. I am but your aunt.”

“Where is mummy?” Mouth full, tonguing aside fragments of cucumber, her voice bares no curiosity.

Euphemia knew the day would come when Delphini would have to be told her parents' fates. Like all difficult things, she'd no idea it would be today. “She—she's dead.”

“What's dead?” Delphini asks, no, _says_. “Dead. Dead dead dead,” she babbles.

“It means she's not here. She's never coming back. She's left you here, you see. With me.” Euphemia feels cold as she says it, dread congealing the marrow of her bones. She's never loved the child, couldn't imagine doting upon it the way Narcissa labors over loving Draco. She didn't have it in her, perhaps, to love small things.

“I have no mummy,” Delphini says, setting down her sandwich. She repeats the phrase again and again, louder as she repeats herself, her voice rising to a shrill scream. “I HAVE NO MUMMY!” The glasses in the cabinets shatter, house elves scurrying from the room to repair the damage. The light seems to bend around the raging child, all the hair on Euphemia's arms standing to a point. Almost beyond all comprehension, Delphi rises as if on an unseen wind, several inches off the floor.

She is three years old.

 

***

 

Where Delphini nicked the wireless is anyone's guess—some oblivious neighboring witch or wizard with young children Delphini has taken to having tea with, perhaps. After years of living with the solitary child, Euphemia resigned herself to integrating the near orphan into polite wizarding society. What other options were there? To hold her as a captive in the Rowle home for the rest of her natural life? She knew the histories, had heard stories of mad Ariana Dumbledore locked away and blasting her mother into blood and bone fragments. Like the Gaunts, hermits and reputation-less, Euphemia knew what pure-blooded seclusion would bring. So she allows Delphini a smattering of pure-blooded friends, the entire community barely reuniting after enduring such a massive blow. With husbands both dead and incarcerated, they had only what remained.

Euphemia tries to focus on the afternoon edition of The Daily Prophet, something obnoxious about the insufferable Harry Potter doing yet another nausea-inducing act of charity, but the quavering singing coming from Delphini's room is making her blood boil. The child sings along to the songs on the wireless on an hourly basis, ratcheting up the volume on the tiny gadget to a deafening level when programs come on, voices droning through the house and rattling every nerve.

She'd tried at first to limit Delphini's listening, but was met with tantrums so fierce that she counted herself lucky to have the walls remain standing on the estate. In the end, the struggle simply wasn't worth it to Euphemia; in four short years the hellspawn would be away to Durmstrang, hopefully never to return.

Knocking politely on Delphini's bedroom door, Euphemia whispers a spell to unlock the door—one that Delphini placed there herself—and enters the room.

“Why knock first and then come in? I haven't given permission,” Delphini says, her back to Euphemia. She's shooting off colors from her wand—one that Euphemia had never given her, a series of them already locked away in a chest under the floorboards of the lower level of the estate—saturating the wall with colors and crude depictions of bizarre Transfigurations gone wrong.

“This is my home. I issue permission as I see fit,” Euphemia responds, but she no longer feels sure of herself in her own home. There is so much control lost to her and forfeited to this angel-faced tyrant. She glances at the windowsill where the child has lined up an amassed collection of trinkets. A jeweled ivory comb, a finely painted porcelain bird, a handful of gold cast chess pieces, and a tiny emerald tiara—none of them given to her by Euphemia.

“How have you come by these?” Euphemia asks, peering at the objects in the sunlight. Many of them are exquisitely made, true treasures unfit for the bedroom of a child.

“Presents,” Delphini says simply, turning to stare at Euphemia. She points at the chess pieces. “Alistair Bulstrode gave them to me.”

“ _Gave_ them to you, did he?” Euphemia asks. As she recalls, the Bulstrodes are in possession of a magnificent wizard's chess set with goblin gold pieces. She can't imagine Griselda Bulstrode ever parting with them, especially to gift them to an unknown child.

“Why are you in my room?” Delphini says, her dark eyes stormy. In all these long years, Euphemia doubts she has ever seen the child laugh or smile or say a kind thing.

“It's quite loud, don't you think?” Euphemia says, pointing at the wireless where Celestina Warbeck croons about a love potion. Between one blink of the eye and the next, Delphini flicks her wand and lowers the volume on the wireless, raising her eyebrows at Euphemia.

Biting back a reprimand, Euphemia leaves Delphini to her own devices.

 

***

 

Children descend upon the immaculate gardens at Greengrass Manor the eve before the new generation of Hogwarts entrants board the train to spirit them away to learn the more exhaustive concepts of wizarding lore. Truth be told, many had their own tutors from a young age and were already well-versed in charms and hexes alike. The bothersome histories and decorum imparted by Hogwarts was more of a formality for many pure-blooded children; it was simply what one did.

“I'm going to Slytherin House,” Alistair Bulstrode boasts, zipping about on his broom. “I'm going to be their Quidditch Seeker, I expect. Been practicing with mum for ages now.”

Dulcinea Greengrass pushes her hair back, casting a haughty glance at Delphini who is digging in the soil with her fingers. A group of the girls boggle at Delphini's behavior, rolling their eyes and tittering amongst themselves. She was always digging around for insects and creeping, crawling things, wasn't she? No tea and Latin lessons for Delphi. Instead she was given to the earth and the sky, learning altogether different lessons. “Naturally I'll be in Slytherin, too. No other house is fit for a pure-blood. And you, Delphi?”

Delphini rises, wiping her fingers on her deep violet dress. Mud drips onto her polished shoes and she smiles winningly. “I'm not going to Hogwarts.”

There is a horrified, exaggerating gasp among the girls. “Not going to Hogwarts?” Dulcinea repeats, affronted. “All magical children go to Hogwarts. Unless they're Squibs, of course,” Dulcinea smirks, tossing her fair hair. “Are you a Squib, Rowle? Do tell us, if so. I've been aching to have a little fun at mummy's dull party.” She twirls her wand between her fingers, eyes bright.

Alistair Bulstrode chews his lip nervously, memories of Delphini coming to the forefront of his mind. He remembers a pretty little girl who hugged him the first time they met, sitting in his own mother's lap as if she were her daughter. He remembers her telling him about a potion that, if brewed properly, would make all your skin melt off and leave your organs encased in bones. He remembers being pinched horribly enough to bruise, lying to his mother about being attacked by pixies rather than admit the “darling little Rowle niece” had hurt him. “She's no Squib,” he says. Delphini turns her expressionless eyes to him and he pulls his broom away from the group of girls, making a line for the mothers lounging on the veranda.

“No Squib and no Rowle,” Daphne says, turning her eyes on pretty Dulcinea Greengrass. “Are you a Squib, Dulcinea?”

“Obviously not,” Dulcinea scoffs, flourishing her wand. Delphini gestures and Dulcinea's wand snaps in half. The girls scream. “You pompous little toad!” Dulcinea shouts. “My father bought this from Ollivander's before he went away!”

“Boo hoo,” Delphini pouts, slapping Dulcinea across the face. “Boo hoo, pretty Dulcie has no papa. Boo hoo.” She slaps her again and again, ripping out fistfuls of pale blonde Greengrass hair. An instant before a flock of witches Apparate around them, Delphini gouges herself deeply with a nail and grips her bleeding arm to her chest.

“Explain!” Daphne Greengrass shrieks, grabbing Delphini by the hand. Euphemia stands back, allowing the scene to unfold.

“Dulcinea scratched me, miss!” Delphini cries, eyes squeezed shut and mouth issuing a broken sob. “She called me a Squib and scratched me and jabbed her wand in my side!” Delphini points a shaking finger at the broken wand on the floor. Dulcinea is overcome with sobs, gathering handfuls of her precious hair from the garden floor.

Even from her distance behind the whispering witches, Euphemia can see that there are no tears on Delphini's agonized face.

 


End file.
